A method is performed at a router configured to perform Bit Index Explicit Replication (BIER) for forwarding of multicast packets in a network. The method includes, upon receiving a multicast packet of a multicast flow, accessing flow mappings in which multicast flows are mapped to fixed accounting values corresponding to the multicast flows. The method further comprises generating a BIER header for the multicast packet by encoding a multi-segment entropy field of the BIER header with (i) a variable entropy value for equal-cost multi-path (ECMP) load balancing, and (ii) a fixed accounting value among the fixed accounting values that is mapped to the multicast flow in the flow mappings. The method also includes encapsulating the multicast packet with the BIER header to produce an encapsulated multicast packet, and forwarding the encapsulated multicast packet.
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5. The method of claim 1, wherein the accounting flag is further configured to trigger the next hop BIER routers to perform reporting their identifiers.
6. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the multicast flows is mapped to a distinct fixed accounting value among the fixed accounting values in the flow mappings.
7. The method of claim 1, wherein the multicast flows are divided into distinct sets associated with distinct virtual private networks (VPNs) and each of the distinct sets is mapped to a distinct fixed accounting value among the fixed accounting values of the flow mappings.
10. The method of claim 1, wherein the fixed accounting values include one or more virtual private network (VPN) identifiers.
11. The method of claim 1, wherein the router is an ingress router of the network.
15. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the accounting flag is further configured to trigger the next hop BIER routers to perform reporting their identifiers.
19. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 18, wherein the accounting flag is further configured to trigger the next hop BIER routers to perform reporting their identifiers.
20. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 18, wherein the instructions to cause the processor to perform the generating include instructions to cause the processor to perform encoding the reserved field of the BIER header with an egress timestamp corresponding to when the forwarding occurs.
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January 28, 2021
September 20, 2022
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